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			<h1>Beginning plans for a Floraverse character</h1>
			<p>Day 00056: Saturday, 2015 May 02</p>
		</header>
<p>
	I found a contact form on Discover&apos;s website, so I have now asked about the inability to change my password and user name.
	I downplayed the importance of changing the user name, claiming that my main concern was the inability to update the password, as I change my password frequently for security reasons.
	However, changing the user name is actually of greater interest to me.
	The user name is a reference to a domain name I lost when my hard drive died, so I want to update my user name to reflect the domain name I use now.
	I do want to change my password though, to a longer one than is currently set, which should be more secure.
</p>
<p>
	I spent some time today considering the next steps in setting up my alias, Yst Dawson.
	It might be useful to update every reference to my legal name on this site to instead use my new alias, and perhaps try to scrub away my legal name from the Web a bit, such as ask <a href="http://www.joshwoodward.com/">Josh Woodward</a> if he will remove my legal name from his links to this site, as I never told him what my name was and theoretically, that attribution should instead be to &quot;y.st.&quot;, as that is my name on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/yst">Patreon</a>.
	I could additionally modify my whois information to reflect my alias instead of my legal name.
	However, I came to a chain of conclusions.
	First, <abbr title="Internet Assigned Numbers Authority">IANA</abbr> or <abbr title="Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers">ICANN</abbr> or whoever says that domains are owned by the person whose legal name is contained in the whois database.
	The main implication of this is that with whois privacy, you don&apos;t actually own your domain, your whois privacy provider does.
	That means I should not use whois privacy, as I don&apos;t own my own domain in that case.
	However, by the same token, if I have the domain registered under my alias, I don&apos;t actually own the domain any more, and in case of complications, I&apos;m pretty much powerless to prove I should be the owner.
	Obviously, the only good option is to use my legal name in the whois records.
	If someone knows where my site is, they know what my domain name is, and can look me up in the whois records.
	Therefor, changing my name on my site is not particularly helpful.
	Anywhere where my domain is mentioned, such as in a link to this place, likewise provides two ways to get my legal name: visiting the site and performing a whois search on the domain name itself.
	There is therefor no benefit in asking Josh to continue linking to this place but to remove my legal name.
	I have come to the conclusion that aside from trying to make myself harder to search for by my legal name, there is no point in redacting my legal name anywhere in which my <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> or domain are mentioned publicly.
	Anyone who will not mention my <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> publicly need not be told who I am.
	I will continue using my card under my legal name for Josh&apos;s Patreon campaign, but if I end up needing to use a card to pay my carrier, I will do so using my alias&apos; card.
</p>
<p>
	I tried setting my Patreon profile location to this site&apos;s <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>, but Patreon wouldn&apos;t let me.
	Likewise, I tried mentioning this place&apos;s <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> in the profile description, but Patreon censored it.
	However, Patreon has a glitch that gave me an idea.
	Every time I go to the &quot;edit profile&quot; page, Patreon fills in the &quot;YouTube <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>&quot; field with my email address.
	If I forget to remove it and set it back to an empty string, Patreon complains that I need to begin my <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> with <code>http://</code> (yes, Patreon forgets that YouTube uses <abbr title="Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure">HTTPS</abbr> instead of <abbr title="Hypertext Transfer Protocol">HTTP</abbr> in this error message).
	If Patreon wants the user to enter the full <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> and not just the user name, does that mean it will accept arbitrary Web <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>s? The answer to that is &quot;yes&quot;.
	Whenever I try to register a Google account, Google demands a telephone number from me, and I don&apos;t have one.
	Setting up a YouTube profile requires a Google account with Google+ enabled, and as I cannot get a Google account and I cannot agree to Google+&apos;s terms of service because they demand use of a legal name for no good reason, I cannot at any point sign up for YouTube.
	Likewise, Facebook demands use of a legal name in their terms of service too, so I cannot register for a Facebook account.
	Patreon allows setting both of these profile links to arbitrary <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr>s, so I set the YouTube one to <code>https://y.st/</code> and the Facebook <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> to <code>https://y.st/weblog/2015/</code>.
</p>
<p>
	After reading more of Floraverse, I have come to the conclusion that the first character I want to make will likely be a bonsai treant, a type of <a href="http://floraverse.com/comic/flora/page/222-species-owel-treants/">Owel treant</a>.
	Owel treants are a peaceful species of tree mimics that clean the forest of dead debris.
	The bonsai variant is sterile, unable to produce offspring, which fits me well as an asexual in the real world.
	I&apos;m not technically sterile, but I do choose to avoid breeding.
	Instead of breeding, bonsai treants tend to gather and plant seeds from plants they personally favor.
</p>
<p>
	Speaking of the Floraverse, it seems the race that was erased in the prologue was not really erased at all.
	They were more ...
	merged.
	They have become amorphous blobs that seem to contain what had been the personalities of multiple previous people.
	They now seem to seek to assimilate others, the thought of which is quite scary.
	The being that originally tried to wipe them out now seems to have been split into two main parts, unable to recombine.
	It is unknown how much of the being&apos;s old personality still exists, but there does appear to be some left.
</p>
<p>
	We need to keep pressuring Congress not to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
	Please send a <a href="http://campaigns.dailykos.com/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=1329">letter to your congressmen</a>!
</p>
<p>
	My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
</p>
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